While most tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) were designed around the idea of friends playing together over the course of weeks or months, creating group adventures that are both memorable and all members will remember, that’s not always the case. As is often said, the really difficult part of playing TTRPGs is finding a stable group, which isn’t helped when for whatever reason you don’t have a stable schedule yourself. Playing Dungeons & Dragons every Friday seems great, until you find you’re on-call permanently and might not be able to make it to half your sessions.
Luckily, game designers know that. Not everyone who wants to play TTRPGs can join a year-long campaign with weekly sessions, yet it’s in a designer’s best interests to have as many people playing their games as possible. The answer to this problem, then, comes in two words: Organized play.
An organized play program is a standardized, structured, and official way for players who can’t play with a regular group, or who don’t want to, to play a TTRPG. These systems allow for a player to create a character and carry said character through different adventures, with different groups and game masters, with the knowledge (or assurance) that the character will be compatible with the adventure and the content will fit the character.
In other words, rather than taking a character through a single, structured, long-form adventure, you take the character through a multitude of different, bite-sized ones. Your character will grow and evolve through these adventures, gaining new abilities and gear, but the stories will generally be standalone, or at least can be played as such. That way, you and everyone else at the table can just show up with your character, play, and then go your separate ways - no commitments beyond that single play session.
Several TTRPGs have over time established organized play systems, which means if you want to play in this manner you’re lucky enough to have a few games to choose. These games (and their organized play systems) are:
D&D - Adventurer's League
The largest organized play system comes, no surprises here, from the largest TTRPG in the world. It is also the oldest of them all - while its current iteration, Adventurer's League, is only eleven years old, the original D&D Organized Play system, called the RPGA Network, was established in 1980 - a whole forty-five years ago.
Initially, it focused on tournament-style play, including competitive events, but over time it came to include living campaigns and one-shot adventures — including The Living City, a campaign that took a whopping seventeen years to complete.
These days the scope is much smaller, but still great: Adventurer’s League follows a strict set of rules for character creation, equipment, and content, and new adventures are released by WotC regularly. More interestingly, there are guides on how to turn WotC’s hardcover campaigns for 5th edition D&D into AL-compliant adventures, along with AL-exclusive content adjacent to those campaigns, usually following side-content to said settings and stories.
If you’re interested in playing D&D under Adventurer’s League rules, you can always check the current player’s guide for more information.
Pathfinder / Starfinder - Paizo Organized Play (Pathfinder Society / Starfinder Society)
Being a literal offshoot from D&D (that nonetheless grew an identity of its own,) Pathfinder and its sibling Starfinder were naturally going to have organized play of their own. They both work more or less the same and, while based on D&D’s own Adventurer’s League, Pathfinder Society has several features D&D lacks.
As with Adventurer’s League, each adventure tells a self-contained story that players can hop on or off from. Usually, they’re played as part of organized play groups in game stores, conventions, or online.
The first difference is that for Pathfinder or Starfinder society you’re supposed to register your character with Paizo, and after each session your game master, even if you play with different ones, is expected to report your character’s advancement back to Paizo.
After each game, you receive a chronicle sheet stating your character’s experience, which records each of your character’s adventures - acting as a diary of sorts.
Besides this, Pathfinder Society presents its story as a living campaign, with each new adventure telling a bit more of an overarching story, and the actions of the players as a whole sometimes helping build the world or decide the path the story takes.
Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Pendragon - Cult of Chaos
Chaosium’s own organized play model, the Cult of Chaos, is a much smaller version of the large, living worlds D&D and Pathfinder offer.
The main focus of Cult of Chaos is one-shots, and its main goal is to help new players get into Chaosium’s games, so most Cult of Chaos content is geared towards teaching new players how to play. Games are supposed to be run in conventions or hobby stores, and Keepers can report to Chaosium and sometimes get store credit or special items for running these games, which are generally run for free.
While most Cult of Chaos content is one-shots, sometimes longer content gets released through it. One of Call of Cthulhu’s more recent campaigns, A Time to Harvest, for example, was initially released through the system and later re-edited as a hardcover release.
Shadowrun - Missions
Shadowrun’s own organized play system is called Missions. Currently for Shadowrun Sixth World, Missions allow players to drop-in-drop-out as they can, in the same vein as D&D and Pathfinder allow.
While Missions has its own long set of rules, generally speaking the same logic as with other games is followed: You get to keep and advance a character among sessions, adventures are bite-sized (though each of them has an optional content section, called pushing the envelope, for groups that aren’t time-constrained,) and the world itself changes as the living campaign goes on.
A peculiarity of the Missions system that’s worth noting is its NERPS point system, where player can get rewards items during the game based on things they own or what they wear for sessions.
While the community is much smaller than for other RPGs, you can get access to Missions sessions online, among them in srmissionsonline.
City of Mists
Much smaller than the others, City of Mist also has an organized play system although, like the ones from Chaosium, it is focused mainly on attracting new players.
This organized play system, released for Roll20, has Game Masters run the starter set of the game for new players in exchange for store credit or bonuses. It’s a great way to help drive new players into the game but, sadly, it does not feature a living campaign or regular new additions.
Tales of the Valiant
Supporting both Kobold Press’s own Tales of the Valiant and 5E-compatible games, Kobold Press Organized Play features special adventures meant to be ran by experienced game masters, mostly in convention settings.
As with other Organized Play events, in many cases you can bring your own character, but being convention-focused, and thus mostly created to help new players try the system, it will be up to the Game Master whether to allow a custom-made character into a table or not. Regardless, all TotV organized play tables do offer premade characters meant to speed up the process of getting started.
Other Living Campaigns
This list, while mostly up-to-date, isn’t a totally exhaustive list of existing living campaigns or lapsed ones. Other games, such as Legend of the Five Rings, Vampire the Masquerade 5E, and Numenera/Cypher, have had organized play systems that have sadly closed, while sometimes fans will get together and create their own living campaign/organized play systems for their games.
Some of these fan-run living campaigns can last for years or longer (Legends of the Shining Jewel for D&D/Pathfinder has run for more than two decades) but many end quickly or get abandoned. Nonetheless, joining a fan-run living campaign can provide an exciting, community-based form of entertainment, particularly if adventures are released regularly and can be played for months or years after.
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‍Tizzy is a lover of cats, dragons, writing, and tabletop games. Every adventure is a new opportunity for insanity!
